Does anyone have any experience of flying freeholds?

[CatsLikeCoffeeToo]

Just that really! I mean the kind where a room is located over a room in next door's house rather than a room over an alleyway.

Specific questions:

1. How much hassle does it cause when selling a property?

2. Has anyone ever sold their flying freehold to the owner of the neighbouring property? If so, what was the process?

Thanks in advance.

Whoa that's complicated. I don't think it can be a flying freehold if the room is over a room in NDN's house. NDN would own the freehold. Interested to see if any property specialist has the answers.

We have a flying freehold on one bit of ours but i think it is the roof nextdoor own, certainly no room above. It caused us no issues buying, the vendors just got an indemnity policy.

I had a freehold house but my garage was leasehold because it was under a freehold flat which went over all 4 garages in the row.

The freeholder was responsible for insuring the whole building. The garage leaseholders paid their share based on square footage. The freeholder has to give permission for the leasehold garage to be sold with the house. In our case, the freeholder didn’t understand what she had purchased and was a total pain in the backside and wouldn’t agree. My solicitor had to walk her through it. In theory this arrangement shouldn’t be difficult but in practice the freeholder can delay the sale of the leasehold property. According to our EA, some have been delayed for months!

You can sell any freehold you want. The garage leaseholders could have clubbed together to buy the flat but obviously we didn’t want to. If you are buying a house with a room over another property, check the insurance and any shared services. It’s quite common in older houses and on some newer estates which is why our garage was under a freehold flat and the freeholder opened the whole building.

Others might know more.

Opened! Owned....

Freehold over garage, which is common on new developments, is different to a standard flying freehold.

It's not unusual and as PP said, an indemnity policy should do the job. Ideally there would be repairing obligations on both houses but that's rare.

I suppose selling it is possible but why would you want to sell a room?

Our house has a huge flying freehold over next door (I think 1/3 of our property is flying freehold). It was a bit of a faff with the mortgage as most providers only mortgage 25% flying freehold.

We can't wait for downstairs to come on the market!

Thank you! This is all helpful. The short version of the story is that we are going through probate with MIL's estate and, once we have this, will be looking to sell her house - which has a flying freehold.

Next door have previously expressed an interest in buying the room which overhangs their house but MIL rebuffed them as they didn't seem to understand it would all need to be done via solicitor and price would have to reflect impact on value of her property from reducing the number of bedrooms, not necessarily what they wanted to pay. Now she has died, they have asked to have a chat with us "about the house".

We strongly suspect they will be trying to sound out whether they can buy the room. Gut instinct is no unless they make us an offer we can't refuse, in view of hassle and reducing saleability of property. But would be interested to hear stories from those who have bought/sold flying freeholds - I'm guessing it's not a common scenario!

It sounds like a lot of unnecessary hassle for you. You'd have to get the room changed and sold before you could market the house for sale.

Is it an old house? If so, I can't see the flying freehold room putting a buyer off.

I have a flying freehold as my bathroom overhangs my neighbour's house.

It just does. Didn't put me off (clearly) and isn't an issue on insurance. House wouldn't work without it.

It's up to you whether you sell the room to the neighbour but you would have to make sure it was worth it in legal fees and that you actually made money - sale of the room + sale of now not so nice house added up to more than just selling the house alone.

Tell them they can buy the whole house, then they can sort out transferring the bit they want and sell the rest on.

I will say that I found a house I liked online but didn't arrange a viewing due to the fact that it had a known flying freehold. This is despite the fact that it was in the exact area I wanted and met all my other requirements. I was a cash buyer but didn't want the hassle, however the main reason is that it would've made it harder to sell on later...

@minniemoll, that is my thought exactly: happy to give them first refusal on the house at a mutually agreeable price (house needs a fair bit of work doing to it), in which case they buy the house, do what they want to it, then sell it on. But I genuinely can't see what's in it for us to sell the flying freehold, though I totally get why they want it.

It will significantly devalue the house (it's an old terraced cottage), especially as there are currently three bedrooms but one is used to access the bathroom (ie it's really a two bed). This would reduce it to one "usable" bedroom and I very much doubt the neighbours would be prepared to pay an amount that would avoid us being out of pocket/make it worth our while (for reasons unrelated to the post, this house is more of a millstone than a windfall and we are unlikely to see much money from it).

They had a rather naive/cheeky sounding conversation with MIL about it several years ago and the amount they suggested was, frankly, laughable.

So thank you all, you have further strengthened my resolve before we have a chat with them!

We had to pull out of buying a house with a flying free hold. Basically, a previous owner had sold a portion of the cellar to the neighbour when he was converting it. It meant that a corner of that room was the neighbours kitchen and the lounge was immediately above that. We wanted to port our mortgage but the lender refused to lend so that was that.